Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming (21 page)

If it is wrong to open your pages to biased campaigners without admitting the nature of their bias, it is worse to actually commission work that appears crafted to confuse. Such was the case with the
National Post:
shortly after we at the DeSmog Blog began publicly compiling what we then called our “Denier Database”—a sort of rogues gallery—the
Post
launched a whole series of articles in 2007 called The Deniers. Week after week the periodic contributor Lawrence Solomon filed a column on a new scientist somewhere in the world whose work, according to Solomon’s interpretation, somehow brought into question the main body of climate change science.

The problem with the
National Post
series was that Solomon’s scientists were not as a rule denying anything. They were pursuing interesting research, some of which added to the complexity of climate change science, but in almost every instance, those scientists were also confirming that the world is warming and that human activity is to blame. One such scientist was Nigel Weiss, featured in a January 12, 2007, Solomon column titled “Will the Sun Cool Us?”:

“The science is settled” on climate change, say most scientists in the field. They believe that man-made emissions of greenhouse gases are heating the globe to dangerous levels and that, in the coming decades, steadily increasing temperatures will melt the polar ice caps and flood the world’s low-lying coastal areas.

Don’t tell that to Nigel Weiss, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge, past President of the Royal Astronomical Society, and a scientist as honored as they come. The science is anything but settled, he observes, except for one virtual certainty: The world is about to enter a cooling period.

The newspaper was hardly in the streets when Weiss started fielding phone calls and emails from family members and colleagues who knew that this was not an accurate interpretation of Weiss’s work or of his personal views. And Weiss himself was stunned. He sat down immediately and penned a letter to the
National Post
demanding a correction and an apology. That letter, a copy of which he provided to the DeSmogBlog, read as follows:

The article by Lawrence Solomon, which portrays me as a denier of global warming, is a slanderous fabrication. I have always maintained that the current episode of warming that we are experiencing is caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases, and that global temperatures will rise much further unless steps are taken to halt the burning of fossil fuel. Compared to these effects, the influence of variations in solar magnetic activity is unimportant, however interesting it may be to astrophysicists like me. For further details see the Press Release on the University of Cambridge Web site.

If that wasn’t clear enough, the press release mentioned above said, “Professor Nigel Weiss, an expert in solar magnetic fields, has rebutted claims that a fall in solar activity could somehow compensate for the man-made causes of global warming. Although solar activity has an effect on the climate, these changes are small compared to those associated with global warming. Any global cooling associated with a fall in solar activity would not significantly affect the global warming caused by greenhouse gases.”

You might expect a responsible newspaper, having received this stunningly clear communication, to rush a correction into its next edition. Not the
National Post.
Instead, the editors passed Weiss’s letter to Solomon, who wrote a querulous email in response. Weiss shared a copy of Solomon’s email with Richard Littlemore at the DeSmogBlog on February 13, 2007:

Dear Dr Weiss,
I am writing in response to your letter to the editor of the National Post, in which you take issue with my characterization of you as a “denier.” I can understand your objection to having a negative term assigned to you, although my use of this term is meant to be ironic—it is clear that I am not hostile to those I describe. I use the term “denier” to describe scientists who do not believe that the “science is settled.”

I do not understand, however, what other objections you may have to my column. Have I misrepresented your statements, for example, or attributed beliefs to you that you do not hold? If I have, I would very much like to understand how I have done so.
Sincerely,
Larry Solomon

Weiss, disappointed at this response, was even more surprised the next week, when Solomon wrote about him in another column criticizing people for using the term “denier” as an emotionally charged epithet. Weiss continued to complain— in fact threatened to sue—but the
Post
held out until April 17, 2007, three full months after the original article was published, before offering an apology and correction.

Solomon, however, continued to write columns under the banner The Deniers without ever enjoying much success in finding a scientist who in fact denies that humans are changing the world’s climate in a dangerous way. That might seem like a surprising statement. It might even come across as hyperbole. Surely no one could go on, week after week, writing a column called The Deniers without including
deniers
in the column.

But I stand my ground and call as a witness Lawrence Solomon. Early in 2008 Solomon published a book version of this collection, called
The Deniers: The World-Renowned Scientists Who
Stood Up against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and
Fraud (and Those Who Are Too Fearful to Do So).
It’s a mouthful of a title, suggesting a combative and proud band of free-thinking scientists who have somehow endangered themselves and their careers by speaking frankly about their work—and by
denying
climate change. But on page forty-five Solomon says, “I also noticed something striking about my growing cast of deniers. None of them were deniers.”

Solomon admits that none of his subjects were deniers. Not a single one. Even though Solomon quotes industry spokespeople such as Fred Singer and Bob Carter along with the more impressive characters within his book, Solomon acknowledged that he couldn’t find a single serious scientist to actually deny the global consensus. I was surprised to find that admission within the pages of his book, even though Solomon tried to layer on confusion by saying that his subjects were “Affirmers in general. Deniers in particular.” Essentially Solomon said that all of his protagonists deny
something,
it’s just that none of them deny that humans are changing the state of the Earth’s climate in a dangerous way.

I was yet more surprised that Solomon could go on for almost two hundred more pages, writing as though he had never made that fatal admission. But it’s not one of the points that Solomon brings up on the lecture circuit or in the radio and television interviews I have seen since. He just sits proudly as they introduce him as the author of a newspaper series and a book about eminent climate change deniers. And I doubt that he was bringing it up in New York, where he too was appearing as one of the guest speakers at the “2nd International Conference on Climate Change.”

I CAN COME up with no reasonable explanation for why the
National Post
and the
Calgary Herald
would allow this kind of material to continue to appear in their pages without taking some care to assure that readers were being fairly informed.

That isn’t to say that the standard of journalism in Canada or elsewhere is uniformly low. Many of the stories within this book have emerged because of the diligence—and sometimes the courage—of great reporters. I am extremely proud of the DeSmogBlog team, especially Richard Littlemore and Kevin Grandia. And there are legions of reporters who, regardless of the standard that prevails in the media generally and at certain outlets specifically, do exemplary work. You can hardly find a better example than George Monbiot,
Guardian
columnist and author of the excellent 2007 climate change solutions book
Heat.
Monbiot broke one of the all-time-great climate disinformation stories—first in the
Guardian
and later in his book.

Monbiot, who had long since accepted the scientific consensus that he should be worrying about climate change, had stumbled in 2005 upon one of those striking pieces of information that would cause any reasonable person to have second thoughts. David Bellamy, at one time something of a giant in the U.K. environmental movement, had written a highly skeptical piece in the reputable
New Scientist
magazine in which he included this piece of information: “555 of all the 625 glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich have been
growing
since 1980.”

Giving a thought to Bellamy’s reputation, Monbiot wrote in a May 10, 2005,
Guardian
column headlined “Junk Science,” “[Bellamy] is a scientist, formerly a senior lecturer at the University of Durham. He knows, in other words, that you cannot credibly cite data unless it is well-sourced. Could it be that one of the main lines of evidence of the impacts of global warming— the retreat of the world’s glaciers—was wrong?” Bugged by the numbers, Monbiot looked around for corroboration and, when he couldn’t find it, picked up the phone and called the World Glacier Monitoring Service, where he encountered a helpful, well-informed individual who was familiar with the Bellamy story. Monbiot explained in the
Guardian
column how the monitoring service handled his query: “I don’t think the response would have been published in
Nature,
but it had the scientific virtue of clarity. ‘This is complete bullshit.’”

Now Monbiot was completely intrigued, and he set off on a sleuthing extravaganza, following every possible lead to try to find the source of this erroneous story. He found a variation of the figures in print: the libertarian Lyndon Larouche’s publication
21st Century Science and Technology
had carried an earlier story stating that “55% of all the 625 glaciers under observation” by the World Glacier Monitoring Service were declining—suggesting that Bellamy had a source but rendered the reference badly. Monbiot also found similar references and variations littered around the Internet echo chamber—at JunkScience.com, where it can still be found; at the National Centre for Public Policy; at the industry-funded denier site GlobalWarming.org; and (this was the oldest link) at Dr. S. Fred Singer’s Science and Environmental Policy Project Web site, sepp.org.

Monbiot stayed on the case. Singer had cited an old
Science
article from 1989, so Monbiot checked copies of the journal from the whole year. Nothing. Next, an associate phoned Singer directly and asked him the origin of the piece. Singer lashed out, saying that Monbiot “has been smoking something or other,” and signed off, but in a subsequent conversation he broke down and admitted that, yes, the information had originated on his Web site. It had been posted there, Singer said, “by former associate Candace Crandall.”

You might remember Candace Crandall’s name from Chapter 4. She was one of the authors of the American Petroleum Institute’s “Global Climate Science Communication Action Plan.” Fred Singer should have had an easier time remembering her name: he’s married to her.

While much of the criticism in this chapter falls at the feet of mainstream media, this story illustrates one of the problems of the Internet age. It is often difficult to assess the quality of information in a Web site story, especially if the proprietors of the Web site have taken the time or spent the money to create a professional-looking design. But it’s also a great reminder, whether you are dealing with traditional outlets such as the
Guardian
or Internet sites ranging from JunkScience.org to the DeSmogBlog, you can never give up the ultimate responsibility for fact-checking. If someone tells you to be skeptical, be skeptical of them. For that matter, be skeptical of me. Search out credible corroboration for everything you read or hear, looking always to the credentials and the economic interests of those who are offering easy answers.

IT’S A DIFFICULT world out there for journalists. It must have taken Monbiot weeks to finally track down Singer’s glacier story, and few reporters have that kind of time, the freedom to phone people all over the world, and the necessary attention span. In a business that calls upon you to fill a daily void, most reporters wind up running ragged just to meet the responsibilities of a given day. The situation has also gotten worse as major media have consolidated. Although there are more individual outlets in North America today, the total number of reporters has been declining for more than twenty years. People are working harder, specialists are stretched thinner, and media empires like Canwest Global are always looking for more ways to repurpose the same information in more products and more markets.

It’s little wonder that reporters fall back on quoting one source on one side of an issue and one on the other. It’s little wonder that they tend to stand aloof as long as they can, trying not to get suckered into committing themselves on a controversial story until there is absolute agreement from all sides. Doing so on an issue like climate change is especially risky when media managers have a closer relationship with auto advertisers than they do with scientists at the local university.

Those scientists also share some of the blame for the continuing public confusion, according to Naomi Oreskes. Scientists are a media-shy group, and for good reason. The scientific fraternity is generally hostile to anyone who courts media attention—especially someone who leaks interesting research results to mainstream media before that research has been vetted in a formal peer-review process at a respectable scientific journal. And while PR-trained professionals such as Tim Ball and Fred Singer snap off one quotable line after another, scientists— sincerely skeptical and devoutly specific—will often couch their comments in carefully conditional language that leaves people wondering what exactly has been said. Consider, for example, the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in which the best scientists in the world worked themselves up to saying that anthropogenic (which is to say, human-induced) climate change is “very likely.” Tim Ball, in the meantime, is writing sentences like this one, from the Web site CanadaFreePress.com: “Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science.” Nothing conditional about that. It’s clear and concise, and it arrives with a memorable punch. Think of yourself as a young reporter—an arts major who dropped physics in grade 11—trying to decide whose quote you should use in the lead of your story. It’s no wonder, given the certainty with which it is packaged, that uncertainty continues to sell.